Web Browser vs. App: What’s the Difference?

What is a browser?

A web browser is a computer program used to access and display web pages on the internet. This is the most common way of accessing the world wide web and its billions of websites and pages. Browsers are how we have been interacting with the internet for at least a decade and a half.

What is an app?

The advent of the smartphone (iphone or android phone) made way for applications, or “apps” for short, that are a hybrid between a browser that access the internet and a traditional computer application that completes a specific task. An app (usually) accesses the internet directly without using a web browser on a handheld device like a smartphone or tablet. Some apps replicate the functionality of a website but more efficiently on a small screen. An example of this is the Amazon app that replicates the Amazon website. You can use a web browser on your smartphone to shop on Amazon, but using the Amazon app is a much better experience and it is made specifically for smartphones and tablets.

Both computers and smartphones/tablets can have both apps and browsers.